


Outrunning The End of The World

by Sterling_Starlight



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: 5kTrainer Novelization, Abel Township takes care of its own, Exploring What Mullins was like, Found Family, Multi, No betas I am an anti-social potato, Runner Five is not impressed at first, Season One Novelization, ZR has a lot of characters, give her time, more tags as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sterling_Starlight/pseuds/Sterling_Starlight
Summary: Mullins Military Base Enforcer Number Eighteen - “Romeo”. Your mission is simple: integrate yourself into Abel Township’s community and await briefing about Project Greenshoot. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, and it should be easy.Remember that no one in Abel Township is your friend, nor are you theirs. You are there to do a mission; nothing else.Don’t make me regret my decision in assigning you, Romeo.-Colonel James Barnham. Acting military leader of Mullins Military base. Found in the pocket of an abandoned jacket in the forest five miles east of Abel Township.





	1. Jolly Alpha Five Niner; Side A

Enforcer Romeo had never liked flying. The turbulence made her stomach lurch, and the nagging fear in the back of her mind that the plan could crash and kill her family at any moment never helped. As bad as planes were, helicopters were a thousand times worse. The turbulence made everything creak and shake, and the walls might as well have been made of tissue paper from how safe they made her feel. The Mullins pilot, an aging woman with streaks of white-gray in her hair, had been kind enough to give her passenger a throw-up bag. It was a small comfort.

“Abel Township’s just on the horizon- see it now?” The Pilot nodded her head towards the aforementioned settlement. Even from the air it looked small; barely the size of a small community. Positioned atop a steep hill and surrounded by dense forests, strategically it was a good location. Not that Romeo looked for very long. Looking out the window made bile burn the back of her throat, and she forced her gaze back down to her knees. “Not much more than a few fences to keep the zoms out. I don’t know how they live like that. Guess they won’t be living like that much longer.” The Pilot gave Romeo a knowing smile before she clicked the radio on. “Jolly Alpha Five Niner from Mullins Military Base. We’re five miles out, approaching from the east, bringing med supplies, shelters, and a loan of one of our people. Abel Township- Jolly Alpha Five Niner, requesting permission to land.”

There was a crackle of static that sounded like nails on a chalkboard to Romeo. Her head ringing with that pre-sick nausea, she didn’t even focus on the anxious-sounding man who replied:

_“Got that… ah I-I mean roger that. You’re clear to… yeah. You can- you can come in.”_

The Pilot sighed and shook her head. “Roger, Abel - heading down now.” She clicked the radio off and muttered, “Hope they know what the’re doing, letting some kid manage the radio.” She glanced over at Romeo, and moved her microphone away from her mouth for good measure. “Level with me, Rome. You and me both know we haven’t got half of the usual supplies. We’ve lied to the Township!”

Romeo blinked blearily, trying to remember the finer points of her mission briefing. The official cover-up was that Mullin’s was running low on supplies. The hotter summer weather left a good portion of their Runners and Enforcers incapacitated from either dehydration or heat stroke. They would be giving Abel all they could afford to. Romeo had just been told to follow the script, keep her head down, and await further orders. She was about to croak out a response before the Pilot cut her off.

“I know, I know. The higher-ups probably didn’t tell you much more than ‘await briefing about Project Greenshoot’. Honestly, I don’t-” She was cut off but the distant, echoing pops of semi-automatic gunfire from the ground. It would enough to snap Romeo out of her pre-sick misery and look out the window to try and figure out where the shots were coming from. She swallowed back the bile gathering in the back of her throat, and felt anxiety sink it’s claws deeply into her stomach. Before either the Pilot or the Enforcer could question who was shooting, something exploded into the tail rotor. Heat prickled the back of Romeo’s neck. Her ears popped, but the sounds of screeching metal and the thunderous boom of the explosion and the shriek of the alarm was no less deafening. She was almost positive that the Pilot was desperately calling out a mayday, but her voice was swallowed up by everything else.

The world spun.

Romeo slipped on a puddle of her own sick as she scrambled to get out of her seat. The force of their spiraling descent threatened to pin her to the ground. She grit her teeth and crawled forward.

The world spun.

The air pressure threatened to drag her screaming out into the air when she managed to pull the door open with trembling, sweaty fingers. She clung onto the door with both hands, the wind stealing the sound of yells as she struggled to get her feet steadily under her.

The world spun.

She could never understand the appeal of parachuting. The feeling of weightlessness as you tumbled, ass over teakettle, through the air at the mercy of wind and gravity. If she hadn’t already emptied the contents of her stomach, she probably would have gotten sick all over again. She pulled the cord to deploy her parachute, and the air was momentarily stolen from her lungs as she was sharply jerked upwards. Where it not for the pure adrenaline running through her system, Romeo was positive she would have fainted right then and there. It remarkably tempting, to just close her eyes and let the whims of fate decide what came next, but she was far too stubborn to ever allow that. If she was going to die today, she would die as a fighter, not at a swooning damsel.

The helicopter finally crashed in the forest. A muted boom and then a blossom of red-orange-golden fire and an ominous pillar of black smoke. The smell of burning gasoline, and metal, and electronic equipment stung at her eyes and burned the back of her throat. Romeo looked away from the crash, and hoped that the Pilot had, at least, been killed on impact so she wouldn’t have to experience the agony of being eaten alive from the undead who were, doubtlessly, congregating towards the noise and light. Her headset crackled to life, and the voice of Abel’s very unqualified radio operator came on, his voice quivering with anxiety.

 _“Hey, hey! I, uh… this is Abel Township calling, over? If there’s anyone alive, if you’ve got your parachute open, this is Sam Yao, from Abel Township.”_ He paused, and it sounded like he groaned into his hands. _“I’m just the- I’m just the radio operator, man, I’m not supposed to handle this stuff!”_

“If not you, then who?” Romeo deadpanned, although she was unsure if he could even hear her. The actual radio operator was probably sick or dead, that was the only explanation as to why this studdering amateur was on the line. Whatever the case, hopefully he would get his act together and not get her killed.

Romeo landed harshly, her knee slamming against the ground as she tucked into a roll. It felt like it would be nothing more than a bad bruise, thankfully. She didn’t have time to properly asses her injury before the guttural groans of the undead assaulted her ears.

 _“You’ve come down in a hoarde of zombies. They’ve heard the noise, they’re coming! There are - thirty? No, forty - aw crap! Your only safe path is towards the tower. If there’s anyone alive there, just run. Run!”_ Not being need to be told twice, Romeo ripped off her parachute and took off in the direction of the tower. She dearly wished that she had time to find something that could work as a weapon - she felt naked without one - but that wasn’t a luxury she could afford.

Undead shambled towards her, all in various states of decay and stinking to high heaven. The heat may have increased the rate of decomposition, but that didn’t mean they were any less dangerous. Romeo tore off her thick canvas jacket as she navigated the forest, wadding it up and tossing it at one of the zombies who looked like it was just barely holding itself together. The heavy material did surprisingly well at staggering one of her persuers, and she would probably lament its loss once winter came, but that was a worry for when and if she lived to see winter again.


	2. Jolly Alpha Five Niner; Side B

If there was anything good to be said about the rigorous training Romeo had been put through, it was that it had made her sure-footed. The obstacle course back at base may have seemed superfluous at the time, but now she was great full she had run it so many times she could probably do so in her sleep.

The dense forest made it easy to avoid the handful of zombies who lingered dumbly amongst the trees, oblivious to, or disinterested in the explosion. Decomposing leg muscles didn’t do well against above-ground roots, and any zombie who tried to chase Romeo ended up splayed on the ground. While the zombies weren’t as much of a concern as they normally were, the humidity was. The air was thick with moisture from the thunderstorm that had torn its way across the country a few days ago, wrapping itself around Romeo’s shoulders like a damp blanket. Sweat already beaded at her hairline, and the uncomfortable warmth sapped her stamina.

She stopped next to a tree once the coast was clear, and wiped her face with the end of her t-shirt when the radio came back on.

_“Oh, wow. There’s someone alive down there! They’re not running now, but… Hey, can you hear me?”_

“Abel Township, this is Mullins Enforcer Romeo. Can you hear me? Over.”

_“… no answer.”_

Romeo frowned and slapped the heel of their hand against her headset, for all the good it did her.

_“But it’s fine, we can make this work. Okay… Running-Person. You’ve done a good job avoiding the main group trailing behind you, but if you keep on going east out of the forest you’ll run into a-”_ Sam sucked in some air between his teeth, the sound someone made before nervously telling bad news. _“A small army of zombies, for lack of a better term.”_ He laughed humorlessly. _“Sorry. Don’t do so well under pressure.”_ He coughed into his hand, and Romeo rolled her eyes. _“A-anyway. From where you are, you should be able to see big ol’ red signs for an old steel mill. Run that way.”_

After another quick breath through her nose, and pushing sweat-damped hair off her forehead, Romeo was off in the instructed direction, focusing on the brilliant flashes of red-painted metal that stood out starkly against the earthen tones around her. Sam barked a relief laugh, and he took a breath to say something else before someone whispering too lowly to be heard clearly interrupted him abruptly.

_“What? No. No! We can’t ask them to do that, they might be injured!”_

A woman’s voice suddenly came on the radio, calm and authoritative. The dulcet tones of her voice sounded like it belonged to someone with more than her fair share of experience in dealing with hysteric people.

_“All the more reason to direct them that way. Runner, this is Doctor Myers, only medic here at Abel Township. Lord knows I’m sorry to ask you this, but your route will take you almost past the old hospital-”_

_“It’s too dangerous!”_ Sam cut in, panic causing his voice to tremble slightly. _“You know what happened to Runner Five!”_

_“Sam,”_ Doctor Myers said gently, her voice almost impossibly smooth and comforting. _“I’m not suggesting we send them there because I want to; but there might still be medical kits there that the other settlements haven’t gotten to yet. And you know how it is: if they come to Abel empty handed, they might not even be able to stay here.”_

Romeo pursed her lips together as she thought over what the doctor had said. It was a fair enough trade. All the supplies that she was supposed to bring with her, as sparse as they were, had been destroyed in the crash. And.. well.. settlements didn’t survive by letting stragglers in out of the goodness of their hearts. Not anymore.

_“…But what about whoever shot down that helicopter?”_ Sam argued halfheartedly, grasping at straws for a way to make Doctor Myers change her mind.

_“If someone wants to kill that runner, then taking an unusual route will make it harder, not easier. In any case, Runner. It looks like you’re….”_ She paused, contemplating something. _“You should be getting out of the forest soon if you keep that pace up. That will put you right on the edge of the abandoned city, and you should be able to see Gryphon Tower; it’s the tallest building still standing. Run towards it, and you’ll reach Robinson hospital. Sam and I will be able to watch out for you better once you’re there. God’s speed.”_

The transmission cut off and, ignoring the feeling of anxiety beginning to bubble in her stomach, Romeo quickened her pace.

————

The city was probably bustling, once. Full of people living, going about their daily lives blissfully unaware that the end of the world would come before they could even finish welcoming the new year. Cars sat along the sides of the road, although Romeo would be hard pressed to find one wholly in one piece. Gas siphoned out of the tanks, engines ripped out, doors ripped off and tires removed, leaving nothing but rusting metal husks.

The lawns that she ran past, once groomed and watered to perfection, had been left to become overgrown messes of weeds and grass that easily reached above her knees. One house’s front patio was being consumed by the rose bushes, blocking the front door with a wall of white summer blossoms, thick woody stems and large thorns.

As she got closer to Gryphon Tower -the heart of he city, it seemed- the more apparent it became that the citizens who lived here had gone into a blind panic, trying to escape the virus. She could see dozen upon dozens of cars congesting what she assumed had been the main road out of the city, swarming one of the only major exits like starving wolves around a fresh kill. In a more ideal situation, she would have liked to comb through all those cars for anything useful that might have been hastily left behind by some frantic family, but her common sense won out. She was out in the open alone, with no weapons and no one to serve as a second pair of eyes. The city didn’t have the humidity of the forest, true, but that didn’t make her feel any less exposed. Romeo might as well have been running around as naked as the day she was born.

Sam’s voice coming back on the radio made her jump slightly. She blamed it on how frayed her nerves felt. _“Okay, okay… Man, that’s great, you’re making good time. No broken legs, I guess.”_ He laughed nervously as Romeo ducked for cover behind an ambulance parked outside the main entrance to the hospital. A group of ten zombies stood blankly in the car park, mindlessly moaning at the sky and each other. She swallowed back a curse and quickly weighed her options.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” She hissed. “I really need you to be useful right now, kid.” The fingers on one of her hands tapped a frantic rhythm against the sun-baked pavement beneath her.

_“Now there’s a- eeesh, a swarm of zoms just kinda… milling around the car park of the hospital. I probably don’t need to tell you that trying to gun it for the main entrance is a bad idea, yeah? It looks liiiiike… yeah, the emergency entrance is clear. Hurry around to the back of the hospital, and you should be able to squeeze your way inside witout drawing attention.”_

“Roger.” Romeo replied reflectively. She glanced again at the group of zombies (their numbers had increased to maybe twenty), and ran wide around the perimeter of the hospital, keeping as low and quiet as she could.

To his credit, Sam had been correct about there being no zombies in sight when she reached the emergency entrance. The electronic doors were stuck open just wide enough for her to shimmy thorough without much resistance. Her small stature, in one of those gloriously rare moments, working as an advantage rather than a detriment. The only problem was that the hospital was almost completely pitch dark, save from the sunlight that filtered through he glass doors behind her. “Oh, fantastic.” Romeo muttered, “ This is exactly what I asked for when I accepted this mission.” She began a quick, careful walk towards the main desk. “’We won’t need to send out another Enforcer, Romeo. It’s a simple mission, Romeo.” She continued in a mocking tone. There weren’t any offers to berate her for doing so, after all, and she would never pass up an opportunity to openly mock the officers back at Mullins.

———————–

By her approximation, Romeo had been scouring the hospital for about thirty minutes. Some blessed soul had left a small hand axe and a courier bag in one of the abandoned rooms; perhaps not purposely, but Romeo wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And -miracle of miracles!- the courier bag yielded two perfectly good, almost-fully-stoked medical kits and a torch. Not the greatest haul she’d ever found, but she didn’t exactly have the luxury of being picky.

She cleaned the room of every other useful thing she could find (a couple bottles of pain medication that hopefully hadn’t expired yet, a one-third full bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a roll of gauze that wasn’t stained in blood) before cautiously stepping out into the hall. The torch flickered pathetically when she flicked it on, but it sputtered to life after a few good hits against her hand.

Sam came back on the radio as she was trying to force a locked door open without causing too much noise. _“So, hey, uh, listen… I’m gonna call you Runner Five. Um, just ‘cause… well, I don’t know your name, and we just lost a runner, in that same hospital you’re going through now.”_ His voice was subdued. Not calm by any stretch of the imagination, but worlds better than the panicked mess he had been who-even-knew how long ago. He sighed, and his tone became wistful. _“She was so fast, really funny, and clever. Me and her, we sort of…”_ He signed again, this time to steel himself. When he spoke again, he was more serious, but unable to completely keep the sorrow out of his tone. _“She was amazing. But hey! You could be our new Runner Five! If you make it back alive…”_ It was at that point, right then and there, that Romeo decided that she would make it to Abel, just to rub that pessimism in Sam’s face. As warranted as it might have been, being reminded that her own bloody demise was just one misstep away never failed to make Romeo’s heckles raise.

There was nothing but relative silence for the following hour. Every now and again Romeo would be forced to duck into a room and while groups of zombies shuffled past, a few of them dragging IV stand behind them,  the needles still stuck into their arms. It was a grim reminder of the fact that, the zombie apocalypse had only been going on for a little over six months.  With how quickly society collapsed and then was forced to rebuild, it felt like a lifetime ago.  She held her breath and cautiously slid the door of the most recent room she had taken refuge in open. There was a metallic clatter and a loud groan from down the hall, but nothing to indicate that the undead suspected anything living was sneaking around their hive.  She still slid the door behind her shut as quietly as possible before taking off in the opposite direction. She skidded to a halt outside an important-looking door, the metal plating designating it as a laboratory of some kind. Somebody had already forced the lock open, the keypad ripped off its paneling and wires spilling out uselessly, and the door had been left ajar.  Romeo carefully scanned the room with the light of her torch. As the beam passed over a zombie, it groaned loudly and hungrily.  Its soiled lab coat stained with dried blood and dark yellow pus.  String-like strands of hair just barely cung to its scalp, grayish-brown with decay. It was crouched over an unmoving corpse, trying to scrounge a meal off of a body that looked and smelled like it had been there for a while. Romeo steeled herself and, without a moment of hesitation, buried the blade of her axe deeply to the back of the zombies skull. It gurgled out a death rattle before slumping over onto the corpse. Romeo placed her boot firmly on the zombie's back and wrenched her weapon free with a small spurt of thick, molasses-like blood.  Erring side of caution, she pulled the door behind her shut and looked down at the two corpses on the floor with a critical eye. The one the zombie had been trying to feed on might as well have been a skeleton wrapped in thin leather, for all the meat that still remained on the bones. Its stomach cavity had been emptied of its organs long ago, and some of its bones had been scraped completely clean by desperate teeth.  She noted that its skull hadn't been broken open to get the brains inside, and couldn't help but smile at the dark irony of that. 

Diverting her attention away from the two corpses, Romeo began searching the room for anything useful that she could bring back to Abel. A few more rolls of gauze, a bag of cotton balls, a few remarkably full bottles of cough syrup, and an almost completely fully stocked medical kit was added to her growing collection. She pulled a back box off its shelf and opened it up, frowning when she found nothing put papers inside. The label on the side read 'Disease Control' on the side in late, official-looking text. Nothing that she would be able to use, having absolutely no knowledge about disease, or medicine beyond field first aide, but perhaps someone at Abel could find some use for it. After struggling to try and get it to fit in her courier bag, she finally gave up and tucked it securely under her arm. 


End file.
